


Human Enough

by WotanAnubis



Category: The Craft (1996)
Genre: Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-06-09 09:11:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15264174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WotanAnubis/pseuds/WotanAnubis
Summary: In which Sarah and Rochelle each have something the other wants.





	Human Enough

**Author's Note:**

> I've been carrying this idea around with me for a long, long time. I just never got around to writing it down.

It was a bright and sunny Saturday with just enough of a breeze to make thing bearable. So it was pretty busy in the park. People walking about, jogging, lounging on the grass, making out on a bench somewhere, feeding the ducks while sitting next to a 'don't feed the ducks' sign, little kids either eating ice cream or screaming for ice cream. The usual, really.

Rochelle made her way through the crowd. She wasn't happy about them. She would've liked a bit of privacy. But on a day like this, she would just have to put up with the fact there were dozens and dozens of people around.

She was heading to her usual Saturday meeting spot. Sometimes she had a brief second of worry that the spot might've been taken by someone else, but those worries were just stupid. There was simply no way the meeting spot was taken. Pretty impossible.

Rochelle smiled when she saw the butterflies. There were a _lot_ of butterflies, an entire swarm of them. A huge sphere of fluttering orange wings hovering over a particular spot. And nobody noticed. Not a single person stopped to look at the butterflies. Nobody so much as even glanced at them. It was as though, to everyone else, there was simply nothing there.

When Rochelle got close to the colorful swarm, the sphere exploded, all the dozens of butterflies suddenly flying away in all directions. Leaving only Sarah, sitting on the grass. She was dressed in a breezy top and even breezier skirt. Rochelle mildly disapproved that they weren't black, though in fairness, she wasn't wearing black today either. A large bottle of water, two glasses, and an unlit candle had been placed here and there on the grass.

A single orange butterfly landed on Sarah's shoulder, lazily sunning its wings.

"Heya," Rochelle greeted. "Sorry if I kept you waiting."

"Not at all," said Sarah. Her voice was soft and the look in her eyes was... distant.

Rochelle plunked down on the grass, on the other side of the candle. "Nice day we're having," she said.

"Yeah, I guess," Sarah replied as though she hadn't noticed the sun beating down on her. "Do you want some water?"

"Please."

Sarah carefully poured Rochelle a glass and handed it to her. Rochelle had to resist the impulse to throw it back all in one gulp. She really should've brought her own bottle or something. Especially on a day like this. 

Sarah poured herself a glass of water, took a sip, then put it down on the grass.

"Would you like to light the candle?" Sarah asked innocently.

Rochelle lowered her glass and managed to not glare outright. Yeah, she knew this game. And, OK, yeah, what with one thing and another, Sarah did kind of have the right to play it. But she was getting tired of playing it.

She had power again, of a sort. Not as huge as it had been once upon a time, but enough to light a candle at least. She'd been pretty happy to discover that, at first. She could do magic again, at last. But Rochelle had got pretty cynical about it recently. Because that power, it wasn't hers. It was Sarah's. Sarah was just lending it to her and they both knew she could take it back whenever she felt like it.

The whole bit with the candle was part of it. Yeah, she could light the wick by just moving her hand across it. And she knew, and Sarah knew, that she wouldn't have actually lit the thing by moving her hand across it. It would only have happened because Sarah had _allowed_ it.

And you know what, fine, penance. Rochelle got it. The things she'd done had been pretty fucked up and, yeah, it was, in a way, kind of big of Sarah to trust her with magic again. Alright. But that didn't mean she had no right to be annoyed when Sarah rubbed her nose in it.

Rochelle grabbed a lighter from her purse and lit the candle with it. There. No magic, no power. No Sarah. All Rochelle.

A vague smile tugged at the corner of Sarah's lips.

"Wanna pray?" Sarah asked.

"Yeah, that'd be nice."

They didn't call the corners. There were only two of them. And anyway, calling the corners was more of an official full moon kind of thing. Didn't feel right on this bright, sunny afternoon. So Rochelle closed her eyes, breathed slowly and unraveled.

Here was Rochelle, sitting on the grass. And here was the grass, countless green blades underneath and around her. And here was the grass around and under the candle and the bottle and the glasses. And here was the grass under Sarah. And here was the grass growing further still. And here was the stone path. And here were the people walking along that stone path. And here was the sun touching them all. And here was the breeze whispering through everything. Here were trees throwing their shade. Here were the birds hopping along on their branches. And here was the darkness of the earth. And here were worms and here were moles and here was...

**Everything.**

And here was Rochelle and Rochelle was part of everything and everything was part of her. She was the grass and the soil and the breeze and the sun. She had to be and they had to be, because she was everything and so were they.

It was always difficult, afterwards, to remember moments like this. There was just this vague feeling of absolute completeness, but nothing she could really put into words. When she was like this, she was Rochelle, but she wasn't Rochelle. Regular Rochelle was, well, just a person, an individual being, connected only to everything else by some seriously imperfect senses and her own empathy. Whereas this Rochelle was... not an individual being, because she was not one thing. She was all of nature.

She opened her eyes and was Rochelle again. Just Rochelle. It was depressing, really. How small she was. How blind and unfeeling and petty. But it was a fleeting emotion. Sure, being connected to all of creation was a wonderful feeling and everything, but it was impossible for anyone to feel like that all of the time and stay human.

Sarah watched her quietly, and Rochelle had to struggle not to sink into the abyss of her dark eyes. She was always a bit more... sensitive... after moments like this. 

Rochelle looked away sharply. Her eyes fell randomly on a tree and she _knew_ all of the beetles crawling in its bark and the squirrel scurrying through its leaves. After all, she'd been that tree only moments again. And those beetles. And that squirrel.

"Pretty intense, huh?" Sarah remarked.

Rochelle nodded. "Always is."

"Yeah," she said.

Rochelle glanced at her. Alright, she had to speak up. She'd been harboring suspicions for a while now. Ever since Sarah had decided to forgive her enough to let her do magic again. Only reason she hadn't voiced them yet was because she'd been too scared to. But there was a time for everything and all that, and now seemed like as good a time as any.

"You always feel like that, don't you?" said Rochelle. "I mean, when you have enough power to conjure up a storm out of nothing, you kind of have to be really connected."

"You're right," said Sarah. "I do."

"So is that why you allowed me back into the fold?" said Rochelle.

"I don't know," said Sarah. "Maybe. I guess... I guess I thought you... well, you wouldn't understand, but come as close to understanding as anyone else."

"Except for that woman at the magic shop," said Rochelle.

"Well, yeah, OK, except for her," said Sarah. "But she's not really someone I could just casually hang out with, you know?"

"And-" Rochelle began and stopped.

_And Nancy._ But, no. That was just a wound neither of them really wanted to reopen.

"And, uh, you know what?" Rochelle stammered, desperately trying to think of something to say that wasn't Nancy.

"What?" Sarah asked.

"Getting together once a week for this is great and all, but, you know, we should, I dunno, catch a movie or something," said Rochelle.

"Catch a movie?" Sarah said, in the kind of ironic deadpan was almost comforting.

"Yeah," said Rochelle. "Sure, why not? Pick some terrible movie, grab a bucket of popcorn and just have fun for a bit. It'd be a distraction."

"I'm not really into terrible movies," said Sarah.

"Fine, we could watch a good one, _I guess_ ," said Rochelle. "So how about it?"

Sarah stared at Rochelle for slightly too long. Worse, Rochelle got the feeling she wasn't actually staring at her. Then Sarah suddenly chuckled.

"OK, yeah," said Sarah. "Sure."

"Great," said Rochelle. "Want me to pick something?"

"With your apparent taste in movies?" Sarah asked.

"I'll find something that's acceptable to both of us, don't worry."

"Alright," said Sarah. "Sounds good."

"OK, then," said Rochelle. "But for now..."

Rochelle looked up at the sun. Just now, she'd been the sun, kind of. Now it was this huge blast furnace in the sky that was getting on her nerves and making her sweaty.

"I'm gonna get some ice cream," Rochelle said. "Want some?"

Sarah smiled. "I'd love some."


End file.
